Conference Chairperson & Opening Remarks

Sue McLoughlin MBA, Founder and Managing Director, StriveToThrive.ie

Performance Reviews That Produce Usable Evidence

Speaker: Barbara Lynch, Lynch Training & Development Ltd

• Why many performance processes fail when challenged
• Setting clear performance expectations and standards
• Producing evidence that supports pay, progression and development decisions
• Reducing ambiguity, inconsistency and escalation
• The role of HR operations in enabling defensible performance processes

Personal and Professional Development Plans That Drive Delivery

Speaker: Cezary Kujawski, Director and Lead Coach at SmartGrowth

• Why many Personal and Professional Development Plans fail in practice
• Designing development plans that link directly to role and capability requirements
• Moving beyond training courses to on-the-job development actions
• Reviewing and updating development plans throughout the year
• Using development plans to support mobility, reskilling and retention

Skills Decisions: When to Upskill, Reskill or Redeploy

Speaker: Julie Ryan, Deputy Managing Director - Harvest Resources

• Understand the forces behind the skills shift taking place in organisations
• Explore the range of options to move your organisation towards a skills-based approach
• Identifying your current and future skills gaps
• Using data to guide your skills decisions
• Aligning skills decisions with workforce planning

Measuring Learning and Development Impact

Speaker: Niamh Moynihan, CEO, Better Workday

• Selecting measures that link development activity to performance outcomes
• Moving beyond attendance, completion and satisfaction metrics
• Using evidence to refine, scale or discontinue initiatives
• Reporting learning impact in a way senior leaders trust
• Protecting development investment through clear measurement

AI Agents in HR, Learning and Performance Management

Speaker: Amy Fahy, Assistant Professor of Business and Management, Maynooth University 

• Where AI agents are already influencing development and performance activity
• Practical use cases that support managers, HR operations and learning teams
• Supporting development planning and follow-up with AI tools
• Governance, accountability and data considerations
• Understanding where human judgement must remain central

Why Performance, Development and Learning Investment Are Failing to Deliver

Speaker: Lorraine Murphy, Executive Coach, Lorraine Murphy Coaching

• Where organisations lose value between performance reviews, development planning and learning spend
• Structural gaps between HR operations, line management and learning functions
• How capability issues show up as productivity, quality and retention problems
• Warning signs HR and management teams should not ignore
• A practical diagnostic approach to identifying exposure

Capability Gaps as Organisational Risk: Public and Private Sector Lessons

Speaker: Sharron Clancy, Senior HR Consultant, Insight HR

• How capability gaps translate into service failure, operational risk and delivery issues
• Using Ireland’s Public Sector Capability Framework to identify and prioritise capability risk
• What private sector organisations can adopt from public sector capability approaches
• Where public sector organisations can apply private sector execution practices
• Practical steps to make capability visible and actionable

Strengthening Alignment Across Performance, Development and Learning

Speaker: Maura O'Toole, Owner and Principal Trainer, Facilitrain Ireland

• Common points of breakdown between HR operations, managers and learning teams
• Clarifying ownership and accountability across functions
• Improving consistency in performance and development practices
• Embedding development into day-to-day work
• Practical actions to strengthen workforce capability over time